Jack Welch

Too many times people face problems that they deem unsolvable. They stop trying to solve the problem by saying, “It is what it is.”

But is it?

An unsolvable problem is really just a problem where the solution has not yet been identified.

Why do some people solve enormous problems while others give up? According to Bill Hybels, “Visionary people face the same problems everyone else faces; but rather than get paralyzed by their problems, visionaries immediately commit themselves to finding a solution.”

Here are the steps that will help you solve those unsolvable problems:

Re-Group. Just because you can’t see the answer to a problem doesn’t mean the answer isn’t already there. The odds are that someone, somewhere, has faced the same problem and at least stumbled upon the answer. Trust that you will find it, somewhere else, if you look.

“If you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world, or in the room, you’ve got real problems.” – Jack Welch

Re-Grip. Prepare yourself to hang on long enough to find that solution. Look around you. Where are other successes happening? Who is having those successes? How are they having those successes? Select from the many choices you will find and take hold of what will work for your problem.

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”- Albert Einstein

Re-Commit. Now that you have decided to solve the unsolvable problem, and you chose the right solution, commit to give it all you’ve got.

“It’s the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal that will enable you to attain the success you seek.” – Mario Andretti

Share this:

You’re always working on culture, but you have choices to make if you want to ensure your work leads to the right culture for your company.

Culture is what you stand for. Culture is what you want to accomplish. Culture is also how you want to get there. Culture starts at the top but is only successful when it is lived throughout the organization

“If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself.” – Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos.

How to start your culture – Define it clearly.

Start with the mission – why are you doing what you do, what does your company or team look like with it is working at full success. Use action words in the present tense as if you are doing them already. Southwest Airline’s mission is to, “Connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, low-cost air travel.”

Next comes the outcome of the mission – the vision. For Southwest that is, “To become the World’s Most Loved, Most Flown, and Most Profitable Airline.”

Then is the small number of steps you will consistently execute that will bring the mission and vision – the values. Here are some of Southwest’s values, “Work Hard, Follow The Golden Rule, Have FUN, Safety and Reliability.”

“No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” – Jack Welch

How to spread it through the organization – Measure it consistently.

Achieving a successful culture is like any other endeavor. What gets measured gets done. Only through regular reminders and follow up will your culture become something that is spread throughout your organization.

If you want your team to know that the culture is important, you have to celebrate it when you see it. Be specific in your praise. Not just thank you, but thank you for living our culture by doing a certain act in a certain way.

Share this:

If you want to light a lamp in your house how do you do that? Simple, flip the switch.

Before the switch can be activated, electricity had to be disseminated to your home through transmission lines and transformers that make sure the right level of energy is delivered to your lamp; and before the electricity could be disseminated to the lamp, it had to be generated in a power plant.

The Energy of Leadership follows the same course as electricity: Generation, Dissemination, and Activation.

Leaders Generate vision

Leaders Disseminate resources

Leaders Activate goals

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric said that leaders need tremendous personal energy and the ability to energize their teams. This flow of the energy of leadership is what makes a successful team.

Sometimes I think this doesn’t happen as often as it could because we spend too much time and money trying to set up the perfect apparatus. Invest the time needed to clarify the message but don’t waste time when you could be moving forward. Like Dennis Miller said about electric energy, “Why is electricity so expensive these days? Why does it cost so much for something I can make with a balloon and my hair?”

Leaders Generate vision.George Carlin once joked that, “Electricity is really just organized lightning.” Lightening is random and its power difficult to harness, but when focused into electricity it can provide power to light up a city. Leaders generate the same type of power when they focus the attention of the team on a single vision. A scattered collection of activities can now become a united effort to achieve success.

Leaders Disseminate resources. Like electricity that is stepped up and down so the right voltage is delivered to each user, the energy of leadership is only really useful when it is at the right place, in the right format, to the right people, who know how to use it. I heard it said that, “It doesn’t matter how many resources you have, if you don’t know how to use them, they will never be enough.” Leaders should ensure that their team has the resources needed to accomplish the vision.

Leaders Activate goals. Once the work is done to generate and disseminate electricity to the house, the lamp is activated by simply flipping the switch. The goals in the energy of leadership should be that simple. Layout the key activities that need to be done and watch success come to light. As Earle Nightingale said, “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going, it’s as simple as that.”

Share this:

My family enjoys the whole experience of seeing movies at the local theatre. We like to arrive early to take in the atmosphere of the posters for all the movies that are playing, get our popcorn and other snacks, and find our way to one of the seemingly endless doors that lead to the big screens. Once seated we wait in anticipation for the show to start.

For us, half of the show is the preview of future coming attractions, the other half is the feature presentation. We like to see the previews for two reasons that apply to successful leadership. First, it allows us to make our personal future plans when we know where the industry is going. Second, it give us a glimpse into what to expect in the present (the feature film) because the future previews are geared towards what is thought to be the expectations of the audience.

Here are four reasons that successful leaders provide a preview of future attractions:

Leaders know the future is inevitable, Successful leaders understand that the future is coming whether we want it to or not. C.S. Lewis said, “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever they do, whoever they are.”

Tomorrow comes for the entire world. In fact for some it has already come. Peanuts comic strip creator Charles Schultz once joked, “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”

Planning for the future doesn’t guarantee success, but it does give you a definite plan of action to follow which brings a much higher chance for success than not.

Leaders envision the future. Now, in the present, is the time to dream of your future. Create a vision of what your perfect world would be then make plans to reach it. Eleanor Roosevelt told us, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Some of the people thought to be the wisest were also the biggest dreamers. Albert Einstein, the physics genius once said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” And Winston Churchill, the former prime minister of England during WWII said, “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

Leaders plan for the future. The only part of time that is already written is history. You are living today and tomorrow has yet to come. You have choices to make that will determine your future success.

“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” – William Jennings Bryan.

Remember, the future will come whether you plan or not. You will play a part in the future that is created, so why not play a part in creating it?

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.” – Jack Welch

Leaders lead to the future. So the future is coming, you created a dream of what it can look like and you have plans to reach it. The final step is to take people to your dream. The best leaders don’t shout “GO”, they shout “FOLLOW.” Robert F. Kennedy taught us, “It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to task.”

So if you want to lead your team to a successful future, do it now. As Pope John Paul II said, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.”

In Jim Collins 1994 book Built to Last, he analyzed companies that were successful over the long term. Not one hit wonders, not those that are remembered for a product, but those that transcended changes in technology, customer needs and wants, and changes in leadership. The basic tenant of building something to last is to focus on the fundamentals.

“In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever” – Jim Collins

Listed below are five main themes from Built to Last. Let’s see how each of those applies to leadership today.

“Make the company itself the ultimate product—be a clock builder, not a time teller”

This is the difference between fulfilling one need one time, or building a company, process, or person that can fulfill many needs many times.

“Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is time telling; building a company that can prosper far beyond the tenure of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is clock building.” – Jim Collins

Here is how you can use this theme in your leadership practices:

Companies – “We don’t have products we sell to customers, we have customers that we sell products to.” – Denis G. McLaughlin

Processes – “We don’t use people to complete projects, we use projects to complete people.” – Denis G. McLaughlin

People – “Don’t strive to earn a million dollars, instead strive to become a person capable of earning a million dollars.” – Paul Martinelli

“Build your company around a core ideology”

Change is the only thing that will consistently happen. The economy changes, regulations change, customer needs change, and leadership changes. To be successful over the long term, you must adapt to these changes. According to Collins, the only way that this can work is for a company to “be prepared to change everything about itself except its basic beliefs as it moves through corporate life.”

Here are a few examples from the book:

-3M’s dedication to innovation

-P&G’s commitment to product excellence

-Nordstrom’s ideal of heroic customer service

Other leaders have viewed this theme in their leadership practices:

“We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.” – Dwight Eisenhower

“Success demands singleness of purpose.” – Vince Lombardi

“You have to know where you’re going. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived.” – Denis G. McLaughlin

“Build a cult-like culture”

Having a strong core ideology, or purpose, is foundational. But unless that ideology is lived out it is just words. You have to have a plan for establishing a culture that supports the ideology. Leaders are responsible for defining the purpose, articulating the purpose, and rewarding achievement of the purpose.

Once you establish your vision, you must clearly articulate it, over and over, to maintain focus.

Theodore Hesburgh said, “The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

People will naturally repeat the very things that they are rewarded for achieving. First, set goals that when successful completed, lead to achieving the purpose. Second, reward the employees who participated in the successful goals. This is more than money. Rewards come in many forms, all which should be used with regularity, as earned: Public and private praise, increased responsibility, new challenges, more training,

“The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they’re working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.” – Rick Pitino

“Homegrow your management”

I view succession planning with equal importance as setting the vision and strategy for the company or team. I fact everything that I do is about succession planning, including setting the vision and strategy. Leaders should use every opportunity to teach and grow leaders in the organization.

“One of the things we often miss in succession planning is that it should be gradual and thoughtful, with lots of sharing of information and knowledge and perspective, so that it’s almost a non-event when it happens.” – Anne Mulcahy

If you aren’t teaching someone else how you do what you do, you are letting opportunity pass you by. Your main role as the leader is to prepare a successor while you lead the team. It shouldn’t be something that is part of your long term plan to get to when you are near the end of your season – that’s too late.

“From now on, choosing my successor is the most important decision I’ll make. It occupies a considerable amount of my thought almost every day.” – Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, nine years before he retired.

Are homegrown managers effective? Don’t we need new ideas from outside of the organization? Collins summarizes the success in developing CEO’s in house with some examples from his book:

“Consider that the founders of Ford, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Marriott, Merck, Motorola, Nordstrom, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Sony, Wal-Mart, and Disney remained in the role of chief executive for an average of 37 years each. They were founder-entrepreneur types and manager-builder types. Not only that, their immediate successors—all homegrown insiders—remained in office for 24 years on average.

Throughout this article we have stated that companies that were built to last were those that transcended changes in technology, customer needs and wants, and changes in leadership. To survive change, one must be willing to change. However, the willingness to change does not bring with it the perfect ability to successfully change.

The secret to success in a changing environment is to allow for continuous improvement through small experiments that yield small successes in finding ways to take small steps forward.

“The way to simulate the drive for progress is to create an environment that encourages people to experiment and learn—to try a lot of stuff and keep what works.” – Jim Collins

Companies that are built to last do not rest upon their current state of achievement. Instead they are always looking forward to the next change, challenge, and championship.

My family enjoys the whole experience of seeing movies at the local theatre. We like to arrive early to take in the atmosphere of the posters for all the movies that are playing, get our popcorn and other snacks, and find our way to one of the seemingly endless doors that lead to the big screens. Once seated we wait in anticipation for the show to start.

For us, half of the show is the preview of future attractions, the other half is the feature presentation. We like to see the previews for two reasons that apply to successful leadership. First, it allows us to make our personal future plans when we know where the industry is going. Secondly, it give us a glimpse into what to expect in the present (the feature film) because the future previews are geared towards what is thought to be the expectaions of the audience.

Here are four reasons that successful leaders provide a preview of future attractions: